America Already Reaches New Debt Ceiling

Well, that didn't take long. In the space of less then 48 hours after passing the debt ceiling increase the United States is already back at the limit.

U.S. debt shot up $239 billion on Tuesday — the largest one-day bump in history — as the government flexed the new borrowing room it earned in this week’s debt-limit increase deal.

The debt subject to the statutory limit shot way past the old cap of $14.294 trillion to hit $14.532 trillion on Tuesday, according to the latest the Treasury Department figures, which are released on the next business day.

That increase puts the government already remarkably close to the new debt limit of $14.694, which means one day’s new borrowing ate up 60 percent of the $400 billion in space Congress granted the president this week.

This round of borrowing now puts us at 100% of GDP in debt. That means that the entire output of Americans now goes just to the debt.

The more you give the more they take. Hell, it looks like the first order of business when Congress comes off its' little vacation will be to go back into talks to raise the debt ceiling. It is almost as if this administration is determined to spend this country into oblivion. A question I have heard several times is if you were trying to deliberately destroy this economy, name me one thing you would have done different?

The EPA has been taking advantage of all the attention on Congress to push ahead with one edict after another that will have the effect of crippling energy production in this country even further. Slublog, one of Ace's crack hobo hunters, has a piece up about how soon that heart healthy cereal known as Cheerios will probably be inducing heart attacks when you see the price cause of new regulations.

More borrowing, more spending, more rules and regulations all aimed at further reducing further the productivity in America and handicapping not only energy production but instilling even more instability into business community.

I originally thought that we could survive four years of Obama, using Jimmy Carter as a model, but I no longer have even that glimmer of optimism. Folks, quite frankly I could care less who the next president is at this point, hell pick a random name out the Dubuque, Iowa phonebook. They certainly could not do anything more destructive then this administration has done.

Hope Is Gone Now That Change Has Come

Adding to the growing list of companies having to lay people off due to the uncertainty in the economic climate because of all the regulations and seeming indifference from the Obama administration is Piedmont hospital in Georgia, which will now lay off 464 people.

The move is, in part, a reaction to hurdles many hospitals are facing, including a growing number of uninsured patients, a new state hospital bed tax, anticipated cuts to Medicare reimbursements and the Medicaid expansion in 2014, Day said.

This comes on the heels of the recent announcement from an energy company which is forced to lay off 600 people in order to meet new rules and regulations from the EPA.

American Electric Power on Thursday announced it plans to shut down several coal-fired power plants, convert or retrofit others, and cut as many as 600 jobs in the next few years to comply with regulations proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The really disturbing trend in the employment picture in this country is how companies after initially laying off thousands of employees in the previous years have simply chosen to not fill those jobs. Those were jobs still on the books that companies were still taking applications for in the hopes of the economy turning around and then being able to hire. Those jobs will now be gone forever.

The other side effect is that those that have managed to retain their jobs are being worked to death and now after two years of this administrations misguided, inept, and total indifference to the plight of the worker are approaching the burn out stage which will no doubt lead to further issues with people simply giving up. Depending on the individual this continued burn out of the workers will manifest itself in one of two ways. A resignation that this is the way life is going to be and either refusing to let a job get the better of you and slowing down to do what is required to keep your job and nothing more, or trying to keep up with the demands of the job and risking serious physical harm along with damage to any personal relationships outside of the workplace.

In either case it paints a very bleak picture for the future prospects of counting on the spirit of the American people to be able to turn around and succeed in spite of the odds.

I don't think this is the fundamental change that most Americans had in mind when they voted for Obama.

Only Takes 394 Years To Break Even On Hybrid Car

This ain't gonna sit well with the enviro weenies at the EPA. It isn't just this one model but pretty much all hybrids across the board. I also like the comparison made using the gallons per passenger metric versus the miles per gallon. Here in Atlanta, where we spend more time stuck in traffic then actually moving, we tend to rate cars on gallons per hour.

Will Hybrid Cars Save You Cash?: MyFoxATLANTA.com

Painful EPA Rap Video for Kids: 'Public Transportation Is the Way to Go'

Your tax money at work. Nothing like indoctrinating the kiddies with junk science and propaganda. Here's a sample of the lyrics.

You can pick up paper and recycle it too, and there are many other things that you can do. You can click off the game boy, flip off the light, while you’re brushing your teeth, turn the handle to the right. Close the fridge door - keep it shut tight, no food has been added since the middle of the night. A 5 minute shower is all that’s needed to keep energy from being depleted. A long sleeve sweater is what I know – will keep you toasty and the fuel bills low. Plant a tree in your neighborhood, besides giving shade you know it looks real good.

I said Click it, flip it, turn the handle to the right, turn off the water, twist the handle real tight. Slip on your sneakers, lace em up tight, leave the car parked you know that’s alright. Public transportation is the way to go, it’s one of the ways to keep emissions low, you can ride your bike, instead of the car, if we save on fuel then we’ll all go far.

The USA is where we are to kick a new trend and to raise the bar. The climate is changing and that’s a fact, bears don’t know when to take a nap, On top of that it won’t be cool when the flood waters rise and mosquitoes rule. It’s time to get off the couch and start to move.

Start to move? Did the first lady help write this nonsense?

H/T Laura Ingraham.

Wonderful: Obama's Strangling EPA Regulations Could Cost Another 7.3 Million Jobs

I have no idea how he'll blame Bush for any of this, but rest assured, he'll try. They says his is a historic presidency. By the time his term is up he'll have presided over the loss of at least 10 million jobs. Indeed, that's historic. Making matters worse, he doesn't even care.

Industry officials say with confidence that 7.3 million jobs will disappear if the Obama administration goes through with tighter rules to reduce smog. The industry-sponsored researcher who came up with that number isn't so sure.

"There's uncertainty around that," economist Don Norman said of the "shockingly high" job loss number he extrapolated using a study sponsored by the oil and natural gas industry's American Petroleum Institute and covering just 11 states.

"Even if the numbers are half of that, the number is huge," he said.

EPA Starts Flexing Their Muscles

Lisa Jackson over at the EPA has begun to flex her muscles, probably in response to the reality that any sort of movement on the Cap and Trade legislation passed by the Queen Nancy-led House is now dead in the water after the debacle that the Health Care legislation has become.

She has issued an edict that places further restrictions on the level of smog permitted. Under President Bush the level was lowered from 84 parts per million to 75 parts per million. Ms Jackson wants to lower it to between 60 and 70 parts per million. This move should only cost businesses between $19 to $90 billion per year by the year 2020.

Why such a big spread? I don't know, ask the folks like that womanizer and breeder of illegitimate children and Obama economic adviser Peter Orszag.

All that I do know for sure is that this latest pronouncement by the EPA is more fluff then it is real substance right now. It is designed to appease the enviro-radicals on the far left more then it has any immediate effect.

Counties and states will have up to 20 years to meet the new limits, depending on how severely they are out of compliance. They will have to submit plans for meeting the new limits by end of 2013 or early 2014.

Why is it that everything coming out of this administration seems to be timed to happen after the 2012 elections?

Besides, haven't they heard the world is going to end on Dec 21, 2012 anyway?

This comes on the heels of an announcement earlier today by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that they are going to tighten up the rules regarding drilling for oil and natural gas.

"We don't believe we ought to be drilling anywhere and everywhere," Salazar said at a news conference. "We believe we need a balanced approach and a thoughtful approach" that allows development of oil and gas leases on public lands while also protecting national parks, endangered species and municipal watersheds.

Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, criticized the Bush administration for what he called a "headlong rush" to lease public lands. Early last year, Salazar suspended 60 of 77 leases in Utah approved in that administration's waning days.

The changes announced Wednesday are intended to bring greater consistency and public engagement to onshore oil and gas leasing, Salazar said, with a goal of reducing legal challenges that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars and energy companies months or even years of delays.

It appears that Obama's Environmental and Energy team is hitting the ground running in this new year. None of their new restrictions requires congressional approval and simply come about by royal fiat.

Government Lackey Announces Plan to Reduce BS

Well not actually bullsh*t, but rather the methane gas given off by cow manure. Ever since the EPA announced that they were going to crackdown on the so-called greenhouse gases, the enviro crowd has engaged the warp drive to cram this down everybody's throats. The target here is cattle farmers, and as always the biggest concern among those who will have to try and live up the pie in sky, deluded dreams of the enviro wackos is the cost.

The plan calls for persuading more American farmers to purchase an anaerobic digester, which essentially converts cow manure into electricity. The problem is that, so far, only 2 percent of U.S. dairy farmers are using the technology, mostly because it is too costly for family farmers.

So far this only a memorandum asking for voluntary cooperation. Yeah, right. As soon as the goals aren't being met the all powerful EPA will swoop in with their taxes, fines, and penalties to encourage the recalcitrant offenders into obedience.

Tom Vilsack, the Agriculture Secretary, hinted at just such a thing.

Vilsack acknowledged that farmers, who would be exempt from capping their emissions under current climate legislation, would be motivated to take part by selling offsets or emission credits on voluntary carbon markets, or eventually in a government cap and trade system.

There Go The Jobs In The Energy Sector

The EPA led by Lisa Jackson, a big global warming acolyte, is prepared to announce next week that CO2 is a dangerous gas. That's right, everytime you exhale according to our imperial federal government you will be emitting a dangerous gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an "endangerment" decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

I guess this another case of where the science is settled.

In the past activist judges have used previous reports citing CO2 as a dangerous gas as a reason to bar the construction of clean coal plants and to restrict the building of refineries, even though there was no official stamp on that line of reasoning. With the EPA making it official, it will be yet another blow to manufacturing and the energy sectors of our economy.

There won't any recovery anytime soon at the rate this is going. Without jobs and entire sections of our business world being handcuffed with everything from salary caps to ridiculous rulings like this, there simply won't be any where to hire people.

No, I am not putting much stock in those November unemployment numbers. Businesses just weren't up to laying off more people at the end of the year. Keep an eye on the numbers for January, which will of course take all the experts once again by surprise.

EPA Lawyers Challenging the White House 'Truth' Machine

Dare to oppose the party line? Prepare to have your life and liberties turned upside down. Dissent is to be crushed. I don't care if you are Fox News, a health insurance company, or simply private citizens who question the propaganda coming out of this administration.

Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade -- a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade -- as a means to fight climate change.

Here is the video that Williams and Zabel produced that is causing all the hand-wringing and the attempted denial of First Amendment rights of these two EPA lawyers.

'He Came Out With the Truth. They Don't Want the Truth at the EPA'

They can't handle the inconvenient truth.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.

According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.

Seems to be a global problem here where those who disagree with the current alarmist dogma and back it up with facts are not welcome in the public arena.

Why is the left so afraid of those who disagree with them and have the facts to support their argument?

Treasury Secretary a Global Warming Acolyte

The one common thread all of the appointees the President In Training Pants have is they are global warming acolytes. From Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, to his EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, and now even the Treasury Secretary.

U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress on Wednesday.

The absolute refusal of any of the liberals in congress and all of the inner circle of Obama advisers to allow us to pursue and process a natural resource we have at our fingertips to fuel our energy needs until any of these alternative energy sources become viable or sustainable is just plain nuts.

The Treasury Secretary coming out and saying he is against any incentives for oil and gas companies while the EPA chief is vigorously pursuing having CO2 declared a greenhouse gas in her efforts to shut down coal power plants like the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Seblius did while governor of Kansas to Steven Chu who has reservations about nuclear power due to concerns about managing the waste material, his whole inner circle is working very hard to cripple this country.

Jobs and health care won't mean much if you don't have the power to light the workplace or handle all of the high tech medical equipment in hospitals to treat the sick.

This is just unbelievable and if I have said it once I am going to say it for the hundredth time, this administration is going to use its slavish devotion to the cult of global warming to wreck this economy, beyond the stage at which it may be possible to recover.

For all you folks all excited and jumping for joy at that $13 you are getting back in your paychecks, try this on for size.

The Obama administration's budget would levy an excise tax on oil and natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, raising $5.3 billion in revenue from 2011 to 2019.

This new 13 percent tax on all oil and gas production in the Gulf would only affect those companies enjoying a loophole that allows them to avoid paying royalties on the energy supplies they drill. Companies already paying royalties would get a tax credit.

Obama's budget would also place a $4 per acre annual fee on energy leases in the Gulf that are designated as nonproducing. The budget proposal projects the fee would generate $1.2 billion from 2010 to 2019.

Those fees and taxes will be passed right on to the consumer who uses gas in their car or natural gas to heat their home.

The government giveth and the government taketh away. And taketh. And taketh.

For a real eye opener read this speech given by Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change from the State Department.

Great News: EPA to Regulate Carbon Dioxide, U.S. Economy Officially On Life Support

Apparently the Obama administration plans to completely wreck the U.S. economy as fast as possible. It's bad enough we're spending trillions in bailouts and so-called "stimulus" plans, but now they're really going over the edge by proposing to regulate carbon dioxide, all in some strange quest to fight mythical global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

The decision, which most likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen.

Read that part again: a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. Translated: You're going to be gouged like never before.

No doubt this will help "create" jobs, no?

Good luck selling this risky scheme to all those industrial blue states that make up the base of the Democrat Party.

Even some who favor an aggressive approach to climate change said they were wary of the agency’s asserting exclusive authority over carbon emissions. They say that the Clean Air Act, now more than 40 years old, was not designed to regulate ubiquitous substances like carbon dioxide. Using the law, they say, would capture carbon emissions from new facilities, but not existing ones, blunting its impact. They also believe that a broader approach that addresses all sectors of the economy and that is fully debated in Congress would be better than a regulatory approach that could drag through the courts for years.

Why bother with the courts/ King Obama can just sign an executive order, stick his nose in the air and be done with it.

That is not likely to assuage critics, including many Democrats from states dependent on coal-generated electricity and manufacturing jobs, where such regulation could significantly increase costs. Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who has long championed the interests of the auto industry, said that the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by the E.P.A. would set off a “glorious mess” that would resonate throughout the economy.

Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, warned Ms. Jackson during her January confirmation hearing that she should not undercut Congress’s authority by using the agency’s regulatory power to address global warming. Mr. Barrasso called the use of the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon “a disaster waiting to happen.”

There no queston this strangling of the economy while we're in a recession will just makes things far worse, but apparently that's what Obama and the Democrats want so they can continue spreading their message of fear and crisis wherever they go.

They'll pay a huge price themselves in the 2010 midterm elections.

Linked at Gateway Pundit. Thanks!

Terror Moles in U.S. Government?

The Nada Prouty case is disturbing enough, but how safe does it make you feel to know we have other non-citizen terror moles working within our government?

This story ought to be a wake-up call.

Thanks to lax background checks, even after 9/11, the Hezbollah spy who managed to obtain sensitive jobs at the FBI and CIA is not the first terrorist supporter to infiltrate the U.S. government.

An alleged al-Qaida operative also infiltrated the Environmental Protection Agency, according to federal investigators and court documents obtained by WND.

The case, details of which are revealed here for the first time, involves Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani national who obtained a sensitive position with the EPA in Washington as a toxicologist even though she was not a U.S. citizen.

Like the Lebanese national suspected of passing secrets to Hezbollah, Tehseen lied about her citizenship on her government application, a falsehood that the government failed – in both cases – to catch in its security background investigation.

In hiring Tehseen in 1998, the EPA also missed another red flag in her file – her husband's ties to Pakistani intelligence, which has a long history of clandestine support for both the Taliban and al-Qaida. Her husband served as a major in the Pakistani military specializing in intelligence.

FBI investigators say that while Tehseen had access to classified information as a toxicologist, she and her husband ran a charitable front for Osama bin Laden's inner circle in Peshawar, Pakistan. She even got colleagues to donate to the front – called Help Orphans and Widows, or HOW – which, among other things, operated an orphanage and madrassa for more than 200 boys on the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Investigators say Tehseen, a "very devout" Muslim who wears a hijab, was really acting as a conduit for money funneled to bin Laden from the Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department has blacklisted for helping fund bin Laden's operations overseas. Treasury has frozen IARA's assets, and the FBI has conducted raids on its offices.

Investigators also suspect the building she used for the orphanage doubled as a safehouse for al-Qaida.

So in 1998, the EPA hired a non-citizen with terrorist ties and failed to properly screen her? Ironic how that's areound the time Bill Clinton passed on getting bin Laden.

Good work, Slick!

Perhaps someone could ask Mrs. Clinton about this one.

How Many Vehicles Will Michael Moore Power?

Better yet, teamed up with Rosie O'Donnell, their leftover grease could power much of Northern California.

Food grease to fuel cars in California

Supermarkets, cafeterias and restaurants like Kentucky Fried Chicken, are partnering with California biodiesel company Energy Alternative Solutions to recycle food waste into alternative fuel.

EASI said its restaurant-grease biodiesel will be sold at fuelling stations in Central and Northern California as a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 regular diesel known as "B20."

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, using B20 can significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions and smog, EASI said in a press release.

I'd suggest drilling in ANWR, but the Democrats won't allow us to use our natural resources.

'Global Warming' Panic Strikes Again

The foolishness continues.

It could become illegal and an anachronism to sit before a cheery fire on a chilly Southern California evening.

The far-reaching proposal includes 37 measures to cut pollution from new commercial and residential developments, require businesses to install the cleanest possible equipment and use less polluting solvents and cleaners.

"We're in a crisis," said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, or AQMD, which adopted the plan.

We're in a crisis, alright. It's called the Nanny State.